A bitter hatred divided the secular clergy from the regular; and this strife went fiercely on in the Universities.
Fitz-Ralf, the Chancellor of Oxford, attributed to the friars the decline which was already being felt in the number of academical students, and the University checked by statute their practice of admitting mere children into their order.

The clergy too at large shared in the discredit and unpopularity of the Papacy.

Though they suffered more than any other class from the exactions of Avignon, they were bound more and more to the Papal cause.

The very statutes which would have protected them were practically set aside by the treacherous diplomacy of the Crown.

At home and abroad the Roman See was too useful for the king to come to any actual breach with it.
However much Edward might echo the bold words of his Parliament, he shrank from an open contest which would have added the Papacy to his many foes, and which would at the same time have robbed him of his most effective means of wresting aids from the English clergy by private arrangement with the Roman court.